1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to vehicular lamps, and more particularly to vehicular lamps used in vehicles such as automobiles.
2. Description of the Related Art
A vehicular lamp furnished with a semiconductor light source, a mirror for reflecting around the vehicle light emitted from the semiconductor light source, and a scanning actuator for reciprocatingly swinging the mirror is disclosed in Patent Document 1. In this vehicular lamp, by the scanning actuator driving the mirror at high speed to sweep light reflected by the mirror over a predetermined illumination range around the vehicle, a predetermined light distribution pattern is formed forward of the vehicle (hereinafter, such an optical system will be referred to as a “scanning optical system”). Also, with these vehicular lamps, a red LED, a green LED and a blue LED are combined and used as the light source.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2010-36835.
Laser light sources are capable of emitting light of superior directivity and convergence by comparison with LEDs. Therefore, more so than with LEDs, laser light sources can serve to improve light utilization factor in the vehicular lamps. Since the light utilization factor of a vehicular lamp can be improved, laser light can be optimally employed in vehicular lamps equipped with an above-described scanning optical system, in which the light utilization factor is liable to degrade. Therein, as a cumulative result of concentrated research into vehicular lamps utilizing a laser light source, the present inventors found out that if the LED is replaced with a laser light source in an above-described conventional vehicular lamp, that is, if the white light is formed by combining red, green and blue laser light, there will be a sought-after improvement in the color rendering properties.